Being an editor means sometimes managing failure as you work towards perfection.
The rough cut process (also referred to as the “offline edit”, meaning it does not “go out over the air, online”), by nature, lends itself to trying things that might play well in your head, but somehow just don’t work in real life. Try all of those ideas in your head, but if they don’t work, don’t just delete them. Put them in an “NG Edits” folder. Here’s why: I guarantee that if a certain idea popped into your head, it popped into the head of someone else too. Somewhere along the line, if you rejected the “bad idea” for some other solution, someone is going to ask you to show them what it would look like the other way that you thought didn’t work. I swear to you this day, this has happened a bazillion times, and sometimes, shockingly, I have recanted on my original rejection of an idea! Some clients will even go so far as to agree with you when you say, “Oh, I tried that already, but it didn’t really work,” but will insist on seeing it anyway. They may need to see it with their own eyes so that they can describe to their boss why it doesn’t work, too.
Also, the non-linear aspect of editing in FCP will sometimes create constantly shifting landscapes where things assemble well based on a certain set of takes, but as soon as those takes are changed, it changes the relationship to everything else around it. Having previous ideas close at hand can be handy.